Carrier aggregation was introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced Release 10 (LTE Rel-10) as an LTE-Advanced feature. Using carrier aggregation, multiple component carriers (CCs) can be aggregated and jointly used for transmission to or from a single wireless device. Each component carrier can have any of the LTE Release 8 (LTE Rel-8) bandwidths: 1.4, 3, 5, 10, or 20 Megahertz (MHz). Up to five component carriers can be aggregated to give a maximum aggregated bandwidth of 100 MHz. Further, each component carrier normally uses the LTE Rel-8 structure to provide backward compatibility (i.e., each component carrier appears as an LTE Rel-8 carrier).
FIG. 1 illustrates one example of carrier aggregation. In this example, cells 10-0 through 10-4, having carrier frequencies F0 , F1 , F2 , F3 , and F4 , respectively, can be aggregated. In this example, the cells 10-0 through 10-4 are transmitted by a single base station 12. With respect to a particular wireless device, one of the cells 10-0 through 10-4 serves as a Primary Cell (pCell) of the wireless device, where the pCell sets up the Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection. The component carrier of the pCell is referred to as the Primary Component Carrier (PCC). Other cells configured to be aggregated with the pCell for the wireless device are referred to as Secondary Cells (sCells) having corresponding Secondary Component Carriers (SCCs). All of the configured aggregated cells for the wireless device are referred to as serving cells of the wireless device.
The coverage areas of the cells 10-0 through 10-4 may differ either due to different component carrier frequencies or due to power planning on the different component carriers. In the example of FIG. 1, the cell 10-0 has the largest coverage area and serves as the pCell for wireless devices A, B, C, D, and F located in (i.e., connected to) the cell 10-0. The cells 10-1 through 10-4 have successively smaller coverage areas and may serve as sCells for wireless devices B through F. In this example, the wireless device A has no sCell coverage, the wireless device B has sCell coverage for one of the possible sCell candidates (namely cell 10-1), the wireless device C has sCell coverage for two sCell candidates (namely cells 10-1 and 10-2), the wireless device D has sCell coverage for three sCell candidates (namely cells 10-1, 10-2, and 10-3), and the wireless device F has sCell coverage for four sCell candidates (namely cells 10-1, 10-2, 10-3, and 10-4). Therefore, depending on the position of a wireless device within the pCell, the wireless device may have no sCell coverage or may have coverage of one or more cells which are considered possible sCell candidates.
For a wireless device connected to the pCell on carrier frequency F0 (e.g., wireless device A), the base station 12 normally starts inter-frequency layer 3 (L3) measurements on candidate sCell(s) in order to determine whether the wireless device has any sCell coverage. For instance, the base station 12 normally starts inter-frequency L3 measurements such as, for example, a measurement that triggers an A4 event when the inter-frequency L3 measurement for an sCell becomes better than a threshold. In the LTE specifications, an A4 event occurs when a neighboring cell becomes better than a threshold, which is referred to herein as an A4 threshold. In the example of FIG. 1, with a proper A4 threshold, an A4 event will trigger on carrier frequency F1 for the wireless device B to thereby indicate that the wireless device B has sCell coverage via the cell 10-1. In contrast, for the wireless device F, an A4 event will trigger on carrier frequencies F1 , F2 , F3 , and F4 to thereby indicate that the wireless device F has sCell coverage via cells 10-1, 10-2, 10-3, and 10-4. Based on the measurement event triggering, one or more sCells are selected and configured for each wireless device having sCell coverage.
One issue with this normal sCell selection process is that the inter-frequency measurements may require measurement gaps. Measurement gaps are periods during which there is no traffic in both the uplink and downlink directions. Using measurement gaps to perform the inter-frequency measurements for sCell selection will incur 7-15% throughput loss on already configured cells depending on the gap pattern configured. For this reason it is not desirable to use inter-frequency measurement based SCell selection for the User Equipment devices (UEs) which require gaps. Thus, an existing alternative solution to using measurements is to select among available SCell candidates blindly instead of based on coverage.
Another issue with the normal sCell selection process is that to perform any measurements (inter-frequency or intra-frequency, gap or gapless measurements) on the candidate sCells, the parameter s-Measure may have to be disabled. As defined in the LTE specifications, when the pCell's Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) measurement is not below s-Measure, the wireless device is not required to perform any neighbor cell measurements, including the measurements on the candidate sCell(s), in order to save battery power. Thus, in order to guarantee that the measurements on the candidate sCell(s) are being performed by the wireless devices A, B, C, D, and F when using the normal sCell selection process, the s-Measure parameter will have to be disabled, which will cause increased wireless device battery consumption.
In light of the discussion above, there is a need for systems and methods for improved sCell selection.